First, here are Harry's rules:

1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.
3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.
4. Spend less than you make.
5. Quit eating crap!
6. Care.
7. Connect and Commit.

Harry will go on and on about C-6 and C-10 - and you begin to wonder if these body chemicals are something they invented special for the book. Some references would be a big help. On my third read through of the book (after I loaned a copy to a friend and had to go get a library copy to check some things) I discovered that they do give these longer names. C-6 is the bad guy, the enzyme of inflammation and decay. It is Cytokine-6. C-10 (the good guy) is Cyrokine-10, the enzyme of growth.

Heart monitors are strenuously recommended so that you can tell which of 3 zones you are in:

• 0-65 Light Aerobic
• 65-85 Heavy Aerobic
• 85 and up Anaerobic

• Precision Heart Rate Training Edmund Burke.
• Serious Training for Endurance Athletes Rob Sleamaker and Ray Browning (the bible for people who want to take fitness to high levels).
• Long Distance Bill McKibben - just for fun
• Why we Run Bernd Heinrich (a biologist and ultra runner)
• The Okinawa Program Bradley J. Willcox et. al. - their favorite book on nutrition.
• The Zone Barry Sears - skip the diet, read the nutritional advice.
• Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy Walter C. Willett - the "Harvard nutritional guide"
• The G. I. Diet Rick Gallop (GI = Glycemic Index)
• Successful Aging John Rowe and Robert Kahn - the most important aging book. (Okinawa program is a close second).
• Aging Well George E. Vaillant (50 year studies begun in 1930's)
• Never cry Wolf Farley Mowat - classic nature book
• How the Mind Works Steven Pinker - serious science! a treat

Open-heart surgery is hugely popular these days, apparently because so many guys prefer it to reading about aerobics and working out

The surgery is not really that tricky anymore. All the surgeons have to do is cut open your chest with a knife, then crack your sternum like the shell of a lobster with a huge pair of shears. Snip, snip, snip. And then the team, don't worry, they've done this a thousand times, cranks the bones back so the doc can reach in and ...

One of the great barriers to success in this business is lying. People lie to themselves about what they're doing. They are absolutely delusional. They insist that their endless minutes walking to the john or whatever are all the workout anyone needs. Or the many, wonderful hours they spend with their dear friends on the golf course .. sometimes even carrying their very own bags. God Bless them. Well, that's nonsense. Golf is wonderful, but it's not aerobic. Quit lying to yourself and sweat.

I talk to people about this book all the time, and the single constant in all those conversations - with men or women, young or old - is that almost at once the person I'm talking to starts to tell me about his or her own exercise regimen and how wonderful it and they are. It's ridiculous. These are big, fat people who have to take a deep breath in the middle of each sentence. Hopelessly face-puffed pudgies who will be dying later in the day. People in such hideously bad shape it's scary. They all tell me that they agree entirely about exercise and they are already hard at it. Well, that is nonsense! Outrageous nonsense! Please, please, please, whatever you tell me, whatever you tell your wife, whatever you tell your God ... quit lying to yourself! You are not doing anywhere near enough if you're fat as butter. If you're short of breath. If you look like hell. Do not lie! You are getting in your own way.

Some tidbits from the book:

People who were bad at sports when they were younger tend to do better at this exercise thing in the older years. It seems to have a lot to do with having to get over not being a sports god anymore.

A person who smokes a pack a day and also exercises daily is better off than the sedentary non smoker. Someday, years down the road, not exercising every day will seem as outrageous as smoking two packs a day does now.

There is lots more, go get the book.